[flancian]

I'd like to buck the apparent trend of reacting to your project with shock and horror and instead say I believe it's a great idea, and I appreciate what you are doing! People have been trained to believe (very long) copyright terms are almost a natural law that can't be broken or challenged (if you are an individual; other rules might apply to corporations...) but I think we are better off continuing to challenge this assumption.

I could imagine adding support for further rules that determine when Levin actively runs -- i.e. only run if the country or connection you are in makes this 'safe' according to some crowdsourced criteria? This would also serve to communicate the relative dangers of running this tool in different jurisdictions.

[petterroea]

Somehow copyright infringement has become the layman's best way of protesting the consumption system they are in, in lieu of proper regulation. Nobody gets directly hurt, and consumers are able to keep up to date with the media that they may depend on for common interests with friends.

It's also a great tool for disruption. YouTube music is superior to Spotify because they found a middle ground that allows them to host a reasonable amount of copyright infringing music. You don't need all licenses if your users can fill the holes

[yoavm]

Thank you! I think that's a great idea, and will definitely look into implementing this.

[mikkupikku]

Maybe also a config option to not seed when on battery power (laptop or UPS), although SystemD configuration is arguably a better way to achieve the same.

[mapkkk]

I would just like to add some cautionary anec-data: there are widespread cases in certain jurisdictions where rightsholders are known to seed the same torrents themselves, just to turn around and send love letters to leechers that connect to them. A good example is Germany with movies and TV shows.

Now, I don't know if, say, Wolters Kluver would/does the same thing, and what the realistic risk of an individual receiving such a letter is, but I think it makes it worthwhile to go over the actual law in your jurisdiction before diving head first on things like this.

I'm not saying it's wrong to seed these things, I'm just saying it might be a good idea to weigh the risks if you don't have a cool 500€ in cash to part ways with.

[qingcharles]

I had a letter one time when I was with Comcast, so I just spend the $5/mo and use seedboxes these days.

[democracy]

So would knowingly participate in illegal activity to catch criminals? Unless you are the law yourself you cannot do it )

[gzread]

I don't think there's any country where a copyright holder can send you a copy of their work and then sue you for receiving it. If they sent you a copy, they gave you permission to have it.

[wwweston]

If anything the culture of the last 30 years has made people dismissive and stupid about copyright — and no one has been more obtuse than an average tech libertarian.

You can spot the worst by really thoughtless ideas like “it’s so easy to make cheap copies now so that means copyright is obsolete!” which is laughably common in tech and tech influenced spaces, but shows a total lack of reflection on the topic - copyright was created as a thoughtful attempt to rebalance incentives in a time when industrialization made copies cheap. Cheap copies made copyright important! Cheaper copies - or fractal remixes - might make it more important.

And it’s copyright proponents who know more than most that it’s not a law of nature but a prosocial bargain that has to be maintained by a prosocial people.

If you’re more “the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must,” if you’re more “eh, thinking through the incentives balance is hard” or “incentives don’t matter now that AI can do all the progress in the arts and sciences we need”, then yeah, copyright may not make sense, but don’t pretend that the problem is that its proponents just can’t conceive of anything else.

[vikarti]

Problem is that A LOT of companies abuse copyright. Examples with known services: - Several years ago I can only buy a lot of ebooks via Kindle Store (they weren't in other places).Actually reading them in Bookfusion (which is my preferred tool) required breaking DRM. - Spotify/Netflix - several years ago they required using their apps/sites only. Now I have to ALSO work around their geoblocks and they don't like this (so...they think I should try very hard to give them more money because they don't want them). There are a lot other services with those problems.

But:Torrent trackers still work same as before. Paid pirate equivalents of Netflix (!) also still work same as before.

Counter example:iTunes Music store/Apple Music and Steam - still works, it looks like Apple and Valme still want my money so they get it.

[Idesmi]

I used to care about copyright, before AI came and I realised that it somehow does not apply to big corporations mass stealing. If Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft do not care about copyright, why should I?